Bonner Bolton: ‘We all live and die on that dirt.’
Photograph: Courtesy of Stephen Tippet

In January 2016, at the Chicago Invitational, Bonner Bolton rode a bull named Cowboy Up for eight seconds – “the toughest eight seconds on earth”, as it’s known in professional bull riding. Bolton made “the whistle”, as old-school riders say. He scored an 86.75, close to perfect. But he had to get off the bull.

“There’s that subconscious nature, when you’re in a certain position and you feel your weight shift back. You’re not ready to dismount, and you know: ‘Oh shit, this is going south,’” Bolton told me. “That’s the feeling I had as soon as I rolled out the back on that bull and got flipped upside down.”

Watching the clip back, I cringed when I saw how Bolton’s body slid off the back of Cowboy Up just as the bull’s hind legs bucked to extension. He was catapulted through the air like a rollercoaster flying off the tracks.

Bolton twisted laterally, scrambling for his bearings, and then landed directly on the tip of his helmet.

“As soon as I hit the ground, it was like a baseball bat had come across my head.”

Bolton had snapped the C2 vertebra of his neck.

He was paralyzed for 24 hours, underwent a six-hour surgery at the hands of four doctors, and, somehow, was walking three days later. Right away, he wanted to see the clip, and find ways to correct his mistakes when he rode again. But he was done.

The cowboy code

Bolton, 29, is from Odessa, Texas, land of “tumbleweeds, coyotes and cactus”. He now lives outside Dallas. His father, the New Mexico-born bull rider Toya Bolton, rode for 20 years and was one of the pioneers of the sport.

“He is the last of those old-school cowboys. The ones from the era of taking your hat off when you speak to a lady. Lots of: ‘Yes, ma’am; no, ma’am.’”

To Bolton’s mind, these guys were also the most grit-tested men on earth. “They were tough. There was no bitchin’ or moanin’ about the job that needed to be done. You never quit early.” As soon as Bolton weighed enough, he asked his father if he could ride a bull. Such is what happens when your family has owned a ranch since 1903.

According to Bolton, toughness is the most crystalline example of what lives on in the sport. “The drive and motivation and grit and determination, that’s what’s been passed along. It’s the mentality that we want to continue to see, because there’s not a lot of kids growing up on ranches nowadays to learn. Some people might think that sounds sort of military or that’s sort of hardcore. Well, it is. But it’s also the type of culture that our nation’s fabric is made of. It’s won world wars. And that’s sort of the cowboy code.”

On the first weekend of January, cowboy code arrived in New York City. Thirty riders flocked to Madison Square Garden for three days of bucking bulls, big hats and weathered cowboy boots trudging through the snow off Seventh Avenue.

Bonner Bolton’s neck, showing the hardware put in after he nearly died after splintering his C2 vertebra. Photograph: Courtesy of Bonner Bolton

On Friday afternoon, Bolton stood on the “chute”, a black steel platform where the bulls of Professional Bull Riding (PBR) are released, and clicked his heels, waiting for an interview to start. Bolton fidgeted with his pocket square. Behind him were a dozen 1,500lb bulls, two per rectangular enclosure. The scent of manure filled the arena.

As is now the case for Bolton at these events, he would not be mounting a bull. He was there to promote the PBR’s first event of the Built Ford Tough Series, the 23-stop circuit that spans from Anaheim to Albuquerque to Chicago and New York.

Bonner, who was wearing a matte-black suit and black cowboy boots, had just come from a meeting with Vogue. Thanks in part to his blossoming modeling career as well as his deep romance with bull riding and his eagerness to promote it, he’s becoming the face of his former sport. Here, Bolton is something of a decorated, enigmatic hero. He champions the PBR with zeal, speaking as one of the guys, eager to run back downstairs, strap in and hold on.

About an hour later, on the arena floor, the riders strode out on their own runway toward a blaze of fiery glory. As with every major event in professional bull riding, the PBR lettering was scrawled out in flames. And like gods rising, calm and stoic, the bull riders were introduced. The fans were on their feet – it is fair to say that no sporting event sees as many American flags in one arena as this one.

The riders were crowding the chutes as the first bull was corraled into its cage. The rider was lowered down on to the bull and strapped his right hand down tight. “It’s sort of like putting yourself through Vietnam, week in and week out, willingly facing these bulls,” Bolton said. “You grow a close bond with your friends. It’s a band of brothers back there.”

‘I started tearing up’

Bolton’s near-death injury challenges bull riding’s air of invincibility. Bolton was fresh off a career year when he drove into Chicago, ranked fourth overall in the tour’s rankings.

Of course, he fell, and didn’t get back up. After being discharged back to Dallas, Bolton started a wave of therapy unheard of in any of his training circles. He took up water therapy, cryotherapy, tai chi, and hot yoga. He regained near full mobility in his neck just as Dr Dossett, the neuro doctor for PBR, assured Bolton he would never ride again. “His literal words were, ‘No doctor in their right mind would ever release you.’”

“I started tearing up,” Bolton said. The doctors put a metal frame around his C2 vertebra, which connects with the C3. If Bolton ever landed with weight over the top of his head again, the pressure would snap the remaining bones in his neck.

The incident comes up constantly in Bolton’s work inside and outside PBR. He shows the perfectly straight scar on the back of his neck to anyone who wants to see.

“I wanted to be PBR world champion and thought that’s what I was destined for, but it turns out maybe it was something bigger,” he said.

That “bigger” is the second part about Bolton in tension with his vision of masculinity: his role as a hybrid model-actor and a no-holds-barred ambassador for PBR, a symbiotic relationship spurred by the talent agency WME-IMG’s acquisition of PBR in April of 2015.

Bolton had already had a brush with the modeling space: he was Scott Eastwood’s double in the movie The Longest Ride and shot an underwear campaign in 2015. The pictures caught the eye of Ivan Bart, president of IMG Models, who saw the opportunity to harness the rugged, heart-throb image of riders like Bolton.

Within days of Bolton’s neck brace coming off in May 2016, IMG offered him a three-year contract. Since then, Bolton has done a campaign with Saks Fifth Avenue, shot a spread for a pre-eminent international men’s fashion magazine, and is casting for a potential partnership with fragrances.

I asked Bolton if he likes modeling. “Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely different,” he said. “And it’s been an eye-opener. I was out in London, after going to Paris, for the British Fashion Awards. I got to hear Ralph Lauren speak.” Bolton laughed. “I met all these photographers like Mario Testino, Bruce Weber, Steven Klein – these guys are apparently top guns in the industry.”

I was eager to hear about how receptive his bull-riding pals were to the switch, or if there had been any public qualms from the bull-riding community.

“I think I’ve lost a lot of fans for it, but then I’ve gained a lot more. For those who do have a misperception of what I’m doing, well, life didn’t leave me with a ton of options. I broke my neck. And number two, it’s the best thing in the world that could happen for our culture and our sport, to have an ambassador out there who really comes from a ranch life, because there are all these misperceptions out there of our culture.”

They were tough. There was no bitchin’ or moanin’ about the job that needed to be done. You never quit early

“Different things out there have thrown off perception of our sport. Even the Netflix documentary (Fearless) really overemphasized the danger of our sport … And Brokeback Mountain, that’s sort of the number one misperception that comes across when I’m out in Paris or London. It’s like the global perspective and the A-list community perspective, they see it as the latest, most relevant link to our culture. And that’s totally false.”

Bolton’s insistence on the prevalence of misconceptions feels like a reminder of the fragility of the modern American bull rider’s masculinity. For him, “the overall image that makes it stand out is the fact the cowboys are one of the longest-lasting and traditional cultures in America. They come from the days of no electricity, do-it-all-yourself outdoorsmen and survivalists. There’s that survivor spirit.”

Bolton’s spirit, as well as his story, is something Ivan Bart and IMG are celebrating. “What we need at the moment are true male heroes,” Bart told me by email. “Bonner is truly the modern man. Someone who exudes strength while in touch with his feelings. We need someone to guide us during a time when most men are confused how to act or be themselves.”

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Bolton isn’t hiding his feelings – that much is true. “If anything, the wreck humbled me to the point where it’s hard for me to be fake to anybody. I think since the first time I met Ivan and the IMG team, I’ve probably broken into tears three or four times telling people my story. I’m just getting to that point where I’m not crying every time I talk about it.”

With this kind of openness in mind, Bolton hopes to foster a more vulnerable, open presentation of PBR riders with Wild American Media, a company he recently started with the goal of producing video profiles of riders. Their first profile was of the Arkansas-born Chase Outlaw.

“I think the riders should be more vulnerable because it’s hard for them to break out of their shell. There’s a lot of that tough character that’s always there even amongst each other … Sometimes you don’t get the best interviews from these guys.”

By serving as their proxy, Bolton continues to espouse an image of bull riding and the athletes that make it possible. The image will undoubtedly be volatile; it will evolve and spur some confusion – it’s what happens when you push the boundaries of a cowboy’s masculinity. But it takes a lot to rattle manliness in a time capsule sport. No matter what, the pyrotechnics, Ford trucks and grit will endure.